


The Weapon of Choice

by spacemutineer



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Horror, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-03
Updated: 2011-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-16 19:58:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemutineer/pseuds/spacemutineer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was an experiment.  This was a mistake.</p><p>(Note: story assumes knowledge of <a href="http://www.authorama.com/adventure-of-the-devils-foot-1.html">The Adventure of the Devil's Foot</a>)</p><p>Written for prompt <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/shkinkmeme/8789.html?thread=17308245#t17308245">from shkinkmeme</a>: "Holmes does his Devil's Foot experiment alone, while Watson is out of the house, with horrible results."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weapon of Choice

**Author's Note:**

> I'm having fun working to spec. Here I got to dabble into some horror, which was fun. I tried to think of what Sherlock Holmes would be afraid of, and I think what I came up with works pretty well.

The smoke emanating from the lamp started in single diaphanous wisps, then at once blossomed into a dense, amorphous plume. Holmes caught himself unconsciously holding his breath and forced a single tentative inhalation. Whatever doubt he had that this strange substance was the weapon of choice in these murders melted away in an instant, along with the walls. They splashed and pooled at his feet, swirling into eddies and currents, forming distorted screaming faces. His face, in a million places at the same time, shrieking in primal, mortal terror.

He was falling, falling through the floor, falling through the world into somewhere else. Somewhere black. Somewhere empty. He reached out into the emptiness for something (...anything...) but there was nothing. He could see his hands reaching into the nothing, his fingers broken and mangled, twisted into agonizing shapes. Under his skin, something was moving (...oh god...), wriggling and crawling up his arms. He clawed at these invaders, tearing at them until the flesh itself pulled away from his bones. In the distance he could feel eyes (...make it stop...) upon him, dissecting him from without and within, seeing through him (...makeitstop...) into every atom of his being, every fiber of his soul, every deep-set secret he had ever wished to hide. The eyes (...MAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOP...) were unblinking, relentless and everywhere.

...

When Watson found him, Holmes' body was still contorted in his chair. His fingers were still sunk deep into his eye sockets, stopped suddenly in their quest to dig the visions out at their source. His mouth was still agape, screaming silently in wrenching horror. When Watson found him, he gave his own voice to those screams.


End file.
